Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Cloning ethical and moral issues
Cloning ethical and moral issues
Cloning ethical and moral issues
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Cloning ethical and moral issues
Cloning, as of recent years, has become a very controversial issue. Society is firmly divided on the uses and ethics of cloning. Cloning can rang from producing copies of plants and animals to clones of humans and human organs. But cloning can have several positive effects for the well being of society. Cloning plants can have positive effects fo humans. Scientist can clone plants and alter them to produce healthier food. For example, oranges which contain an abundance of Vitamin C, can be altered to include Vitamin D and Calcium, which is found amply in milk. Cloning can also improve the status of hunger-stricken Third World nations. Fruits and vegetables can be cloned to produce large amounts of food without have to worry about growing season, climate, or any other environmental factor. They can also be alterd to be able to be grown in different environments or to produce more food and for a longer period of time. Cloning animals can have several ramifications. Foremost, is the benfit of humans. This can be done in two ways. First, cloning animals can help us understand the way our cellss divide, multiply and operate. We can also learn how to fix ceratin disorders, thus leading to tests and research in similar human disorders. For example, sheep have a disease of the brain, called Scrapie, that causes tremors, loss of motion, and eventually death. This disease is very similar to the human disease called Parkinson’s disease. Scientists can try to stimulate new brain cells to divide and regrow damaged areas in the sheep brain first and then try similar procedures for humans. Animal cloning can also lead to better production of food. Ranchers can take one cow, the best out of the whole stock, and clone it. This would improve his sales and our health because we are given a healthier product. Endangered animals can also benefit from animal cloning. For instance, instead of doing lab monitored pregnancies and artificial inseminations for endangered animals, scientists can clone several embryos for the healthiest animal of that species. Working the way up the evolutionary scale leads eventually to cloning human organs and ultimately humans. This is the most controversial area of cloning, but despite the controversy, cloning of human organs and also humans can have some positive effects. To illustrate, kidney tissue can be used to grow a healthy kidney for patients with frequent kidney failures.
Scientists also ponder the idea of cloning endangered species to increase their population. The possibilities of cloning are endless, however as suggested by (Hawley, 1998). actually doing much of this research for the improvement of life for humans. Cloning provides better research capabilities for finding cures to many diseases. Livestock can produce biological proteins that help people who have diseases including Diabetes, Parkinson's, and Cystic Fibrosis.
It's been three years since the birth of Dolly, the world's first successfully cloned animal. The announcement of her birth brought about much ado and sparked many debates concerning the morality of cloning. In the three years since Dolly was created, the debate over cloning has swelled and receded, but has never been put to rest. A compelling issue that has come into focus in the past several years is the idea of human cloning. Many scientists believe that it is inevitable because the technology is there, and anything that can be done eventually will be done. They preach the value of human clones, dropping phrases like 'cure for disease' and 'prolonged life' to entice the public into supporting their cause. Though these concepts seem beguiling, the notion of human cloning, when looked at as a whole, has serious repercussions and should not be entertained lightly.
In the essay, Cloning Reality: Brave New World by Wesley J. Smith, a skewed view of the effects of cloning is presented. Wesley feels that cloning will end the perception of human life as sacred and ruin the great diversity that exists today. He feels that cloning may in fact, end human society as we know it, and create a horrible place where humans are simply a resource. I disagree with Wesley because I think that the positive effects of controlled human cloning can greatly improve the quality of life for humans today, and that these benefits far outweigh the potential drawbacks that could occur if cloning was misused.
Jerry L. Hall, then a researcher at the George Washington University Medical Center, presented the results of his in-vitro fertilization experiment at the 1993 meeting of the American Fertility Society in Montreal. Dr. Hall gave an interesting speech and the comments on his speech consisted of "nice job" and other positive remarks. On his return to George Washington University, Dr. Hall expected the same feedback, and he was shocked when the October 26, 1993 cover of the New York Times announced, "Scientist clones human embryos, and creates an ethical challenge."
Would clones understand themselves as creations or copies? Would cloning undermine the conception of a human being’s individuality? (Medicines’ Brave New World) Those are two of the most questioned aspects of human cloning. Everyone always wants to be their own person and have their own thought, basically, be as original as they can be. How original can you get when there’s someone out there thinking, doing, and looking exactly like you? Not very original, if you ask me. Human cloning, cloning of any kind, has been looked at as being creepy, scary, immoral, and in the most dismal way, exciting. Cloning of humans should be prohibited because it is offensive to the human life and religion.
Imagine being a first year medical surgeon just out of the highest-ranking university in the nation. You are placed in the ER, in the Methodist Hospital building, as your days are spent saving people from the cruel realities that they are forced to live among. Day after day, you see handfuls of people coming in with a variety of gunshot, knife, and domestic violence wounds. Your troubles are easily compensated, however, by receiving over $200,000 a year, a brand new Mercedes, and a house upon the palisade shores. Suppose for a moment that one evening while you are on duty, an ambulance radios in and informs the hospital staff that they are bringing in a multiple gunshot wound victim and to prepare the ER for an immediate operation. You begin to order people around and dictate what needs to be prepared before the ambulance arrives. Finally the victim is present, only to show that he is not the average gangster or policeman, instead it is the near lifeless body of your own son. Your blood freezes; your brain shuts down, as you see every precious second slip away through the lifeless gaze of your child's eyes.
Cloning humans has recently become a possibility. It is achieved by the production of a group of identical cells or organisms that all derive from a single individual (Grolier 220). It is not known when cloning humans really became a possibility, but it is known that there are two possible ways that we can clone humans. The first way involves splitting an embryo into several halves and creating many new individuals from that embryo. The second method of cloning a human involves taking cells from an already existing human being and cloning them, in turn creating other individuals that are identical to that particular person. With these two methods almost at our fingertips, we must ask ourselves two very important questions: Can we do this, and should we? There is no doubt that many problems involving the technological and ethical sides of this issue will arise and will be virtually impossible to avoid, but the overall idea of cloning humans is one that we should accept as a possible reality for the future. Cloning humans is an idea that has always been thought of as something that could be found in science fiction novels, but never as a concept that society could actually experience. "It is much in the news. The public has been bombarded with newspaper articles, magazine stories, books, television shows, and movies as well as cartoons¡¨, writes Robert McKinnell, the author of Cloning: A Biologist Reports (24). Much of this information in these sources leads the public in the wrong direction and makes them wonder how easy it would be for everyone around them to be cloned. Bizarre ideas about cloning lie in many science fiction books and scare the public with their unbelievable possibilities. David Rorvik wrote a highly controversial book entitled In His Image. In it he describes the story of a wealthy man who decides to clone himself. He is successful in doing this and causes quite an uprise in his community. This book was written in the late seventies and even then, societies reaction to the issues of human cloning was generally a negative one. We face a problem today even greater than the one in this book and it involves the duplication of human beings in a society that has always been known for its diversity. The main issue as to whether or not human cloning is possible through the splitting of embryos began in 1993 when experimentation was done at George W...
In recent years our world has undergone many changes and advancements, cloning is a primary example of this new modernism. On July 5th, 1995, Dolly, the first cloned animal, was created. She was cloned from a six-year-old sheep, making her cells genetically six years old at her creation. However, scientists were amazed to see Dolly live for another six years, until she died early 2005 from a common lung disease found in sheep. This discovery sparked a curiosity for cloning all over the world, however, mankind must answer a question, should cloning be allowed? To answer this question some issues need to be explored. Is cloning morally correct, is it a reliable way to produce life, and should human experimentation be allowed?
Cloning, a topic that has recently caused mayhem all over the world, is possible, but will it be here to stay? The astonishing news that scientists had cloned a sheep a couple of years ago sent people into panic at the thought that humans might be next. "Cloning is a radical challenge to the most fundamental laws of biology, so it's not unreasonable to be concerned that it might threaten human society and dignity" (Macklin 64). Since most of the opposition is coming from the pure disgust of actually being able to clone species, it makes it difficult for people to get away from the emotional side of the issue and analyze the major implications cloning would have for society. To better understand this controversial issue, the pros and cons of cloning will be discussed.
Many people believe cloning is unethical and unusful. They believe that it should not be practiced, because it infringes upon their beliefs. They see cloning as a last resort and do not trust the science of cloning. “Several governments have considered or enacted legislation to slow down, limit or ban cloning experiments outright” (Freudenrich 5). Many people think that cloning a species is a very unideal situation. However the many benefits of cloning far outway the few disadvantages. Cloning endangered species is beneficial to saving most species around the world, in countries like the United States and China, from extinction.
Cloning Cloning is a process that creates exact genetic copies of an existing cell. Cloning is a more general term that describes a number of different processes that can be used to produce genetically identical copies. The process of cloning can happen either naturally, for instance, when identical twins develop, or it can be induced through synthetic conditions in a laboratory. There are three different types of artificial cloning: gene cloning, reproductive cloning, and therapeutic cloning.
The concept of cloning has been around since the 1800’s, although, in the field of scientists, it has slowly been evolving into a vigorously debated topic, throughout the last 3 decades. Cloning is essentially defined as the process of artificially reproducing genetically identical organisms. Scientists all around the world, through research, are still learning more about the topic, but the fascinating process officially gained awareness as a result of a 1986 experiment conducted by Ian Wilmut, scientist at the Roslin Institute in Scotland. The project was essentially centred around a sheep referred to as “Dolly” that was cloned in a lab using a frozen mammary cell from another adult sheep. At the time, this was a significant milestone in the field, as all cloning up to this point had been done using embryos, and never actual adult cells. The Dolly experiment served as a catalyst for additional intensive research, which consequently resulted in a myriad of new benefits and uses for cloning. From that point on, we have made many advancements, and currently, in our modern day society, scientists are more capable of putting their research into practice, with the assistance of the constant improvements in technology. The method of cloning has already been implemented as a solution to infertility, and plants and animals can be cloned for the purpose of creating new possible food alternatives. The main benefit of cloning revolves around health, as lives can be saved or prolonged, thanks to a theoretically simple process known as organ transplantation, where for example, the parts from a cloned pig can be used to replace those malfunctioning, in a human. If scientists keep doing research on the topic at the current rate, and conducting e...
Cloning is defined by Webster is “a cell, cell product, or organism that is identical to the unit or individual it was asexually derived” (Webster 150). The actual process of cloning is considerably easier because of trial and error. This process can be helpful and can be deadly in the right hands. In this light, the ethics of cloning has, is, and will be one of the hottest topics of all time.
Secondly, “the most the human race has to loose by playing around with cloning is that the genetic diversity would be lost (Andrea Castro, 2005).” Reducing the genetic differences will produce clones that are grossly overlarge, many animals will be born with genetic mutations, and there will be a higher “risk of disease transfer (Saskaschools, 2003). “A review of all the world's cloned animals suggests that every one of them is genetically and physically defective (Leake, 2002).” Mutations will be passed on to the younger generation because if a cloned species has a mutation in their DNA this mutation will be passed on. Cloning has been linked with diseases of ageing, arthritis and, cancer.
1) Robertson, John A. “Human Cloning and the Challenge of Regulation,” The New England Journal of Medicine, vol. 339, no. 2 (July 9, 1998), pp. 119-122.